Never Clean
by Willowsandbees
Summary: The war in Marineford has just ended, and Law finds himself reflecting on what he has seen, what has happened, and on the blood that still stains his new patient's hands. (NO PAIRING. SPOILERS. One-shot.)


Author's Note:

SPOILERS. MARINEFORD IN PARTICULAR.

I'm not particularly proud of this one, but it crossed my mind and I felt compelled to write it.

NOT a yaoi Law-Luffy fic. I just decided to dive into their weird little…seemingly one-sided friendship or alliance-rivalry-mutual-respect….thing. XDD

I struggle with Law as a character since we've mostly seen the creepy, serious or planning side of him… but after reading some of the recent manga chapters where it shortly touches upon the "person he cared about the most", it definitely made it clear to me that he's probably quite a bit more soft-hearted or empathetic than he leads people to believe, and I decided to play with that a bit here.

(At the end, it is Ace's blood staining the cloth.)

Let me know if you see any big errors. Just don't make it the main point of your review, pretty please ;)

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Trafalgar Law, for the first time in a very long time, was bothering to sit by the bedside of his patient. This time it was none other than someone who in all honesty should be his enemy, something that made the gesture all the more surprising. He could tell himself it was for the sake of his future plans to gain the respect and brute force of another similarly notorious man. He risked himself on the assumption that Strawhat-ya was the type to honor his debts. However, it was a bit more than that, and he held the smallest bit of respect for the boy breathing heavily through his oxygen mask, a respect that had been secured when the boy's fist had heavily connected with the jaw of a Celestial Dragon.

Law shifted in his seat slightly in an uncomfortable way. The room was silent and his eyes wandered over the blood splattered over the boy's face and non-bandaged stretches of arm, grimacing slightly. The blood of a typical challenger who had followed his marine captain into battle and the blood of a crony forced into war were too very different things. Despite his laid-back (bordering on the extremely morbid) attitude towards violence, he couldn't help but cringe as he thought about it.

He had seen the endless bodies- marines and pirates alike- stacked high and disregarded across the ice and platforms of Marineford for his brief visit. The smell was something awful, the ice was cracked and stained red, and the cries of the not-quite dead had been echoing to his ears from every direction. The thing that made even his heart drop right out of his chest was the sudden realization he had as he glanced over it one last time before entering the ship.

If it hadn't been for the marked coats or hats, _he wouldn't be able to tell the two groups apart_. They all looked the same. The marines lying dead or dying weren't corrupt monsters like the high-rankers or leaders. The pirates who lie dead were not devious child-killers, if Whitebeard had any honor as he chose his allies. They all looked the same.

The heart monitor against the wall beeped quietly, and once again his eyes wandered the few scratches and dirt marks that weren't surrounding the boy's slightly larger injuries, which had been hastily cleaned and bandaged. His eyes finally rested on the boy's hands, draped limply, half-off the mattress and still- he cringed once more, uncharacteristically- not fully cleaned.

Gingerly flipping the boys hand over to examine it, he grimaced deeply as he observed the dry, cracked blood that coated the undamaged sections on a good portion of his palm. (The boy's knuckles were a different story.) He remembered somberly that this was not the blood of some marine drone, but rather that of the boy's sworn brother.

He had not known Fire Fist, nor had he really cared about meeting him. However, the man was long talked about as being immensely powerful and fearsome with his logia powers and raw strength. He knew little about him as a person, but seeing the extent Strawhat-ya would go through for him, he didn't doubt that the man must have had some amount of decency (A loose term in his mind). He had seen that the boy did not joke when it came down to the protection of those he cared for, and knew it would kill him inside when he felt as though he had not done it…when he thought of the blood that had coated his hands. It would torture him if he was faced with that when he awoke.

This crumbling blood was not only the last blood of the Pirate King's son, but that of a person Strawhat-ya had cared for immensely, perhaps even more than he had cared for Corazon.

Law looked over the blood again, a contemplative look on his face, and closed his eyes as he came to a seemingly small decision.

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The young man stood near the railing of his damaged ship off the shore of Amazon Lily, some muddled form of regret for the death of a man he had barely known crossed his mind, he heard the screaming from within the forest gently mellow and silence, and in a sort of haphazard memorial gesture, he tossed the stained white cloth into a gust of wind and watched as it landed and floated out to sea.

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End file.
